Scripture: Mark 2:1–12
‘Tis the season for exploding beverages! Tell me we are not the only ones for whom this has happened. We often buy cans of carbonated water, and we often store them out in the garage until there is room in the fridge inside. That is, of course, until this time of year, when temperatures drop, and it gets cold enough in the garage that those cans freeze, and the next thing you know…exploding beverages! Busted cans. Water all over the floor of the garage. It’s a mess.
Believe it or not, Jesus tells a parable about exploding beverages in the second chapter of Mark. Near the end of the chapter, Jesus preaches about new wine in old wineskins. Not unlike the exploding cans of water, if one puts fresh wine into older wineskins, that new wine will expand beyond what the container can stretch to hold, and it blows up. You have wine all over the floor of your first century Palestine garage, and your vintage wineskins are ruined. It’s a mess.
I would suggest that this is kind of the theme of the whole second chapter: things bursting from their seams. In fact, the story I read a few moments ago begins the theme. Jesus should know about holes being blown in things, because in this story, that is exactly what happens…to his house! We often don’t think about Jesus having a home. He even says at one point in Matthew that the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. But here in Mark 2, it says pretty clearly that Jesus is at his home. And there are so many people there that they are standing outside of the door, piled up in the front yard, straining to hear his teachings. Even Jesus’ house is bursting at its seams! Jesus has become so immensely popular that people are streaming in from far and wide to be healed, and to hear what he has to say about the Gospel.
So it happens that in the middle of today’s story, his house bursts at its seams. Imagine with me the crowd sitting there, stuffed and piled into every corner of the house and yard, listening to the Master, when they hear something scratching on the roof. Roofs in that time and place were made of tile and covered in thatch, so there were probably plenty of mice and rodents that made that roof a home. Hearing scratches was pretty normal. But these had to be the biggest mice on the planet! The scratching became louder and louder, until all of sudden, dust and debris crashed down from above, illumined by the sunlight suddenly streaming in! As people blinked their eyes adjusting to the sudden sunshine, they looked up to see the strangest sight! A man being lowered down on a mat, right down to the feet of Jesus! Four men had dug a hole in the roof in order to lower down their friend who was paralyzed! They lowered him right down in front of the whole astonished crowd! I could only imagine Jesus falling out of his chair laughing, thinking that a hole blown in his roof had to be the most hilarious thing ever! Four guys up there, poking their heads through the hole…“Hey, that’s our friend. Could you heal him please?”
But then it was Jesus’ turn to blow everyone’s minds. The assumption is that these friends brought this man to be healed, and the assumption is that Jesus would do it. He had done it before; he could do it again. But this time, he responded in a curious manner: “Child, your sins are forgiven.” With those five words, Jesus totally messed up everyone’s assumptions about what was going to happen next. In fact, it really ticked off the religious leaders who happened to be there. You see, it was against religious law to proclaim that there was a god who was greater or equal to the One True God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The term blasphemy was used to describe the act of placing any other entity at the level of God, breaking the commandment to “put no other gods before me.” For Jesus to say that he could forgive sins, the thing that only God was supposed to do, was blasphemy of the highest order. He was placing himself on par with the highest, holy God. It would be fine to heal the guy…that was something that humans had done before and could be done by the power of God. But God and only God could forgive sins. It blew everyone’s mind to hear those words come out of his mouth.
This story messes with our assumptions, too, doesn’t it? There are certain things that we tend to believe about our physical bodies. If they don’t meet some ideal standard, we assume that we are somehow broken, defective, imperfect. When we get sick, we take medicine to feel better. When our bodies stop working like they once did, we get angry or we grieve. When someone has a body that we somehow deem as imperfect—a disability or a physical challenge or paralysis like this man knew—we assume that they are somehow “less than.” But Jesus did not. When his friends brought this man to Jesus, he healed him, even though he remained paralyzed. Jesus believed that the most important thing that he could do for this man was to forgive his sins. Before responding to the physical, he responded to the spiritual.
Now, we don’t know the mind of Jesus and why he led with a spiritual healing, but perhaps he knew that forgiveness was eternal, and bodies are temporal. Perhaps he knew that paralysis and physical limitations do not mean someone is less than human, but simply a different kind of human. Perhaps he knew that what the man wanted more than anything, even more than the ability to walk, was to be forgiven and freed. That’s the gift that he gave this visitor to his home, and it made all the difference. And, it totally messed up the minds of everyone in that house. And then, knowing exactly what the religious leaders were complaining about, and almost as an afterthought, he blew their minds once again, and healed him physically, too. “Take up your mat, and walk.” (Oh, and can you tell your friends to fix my roof?)
In fact, I think that this is the real theme of the chapter. These physical symbols, from beginning to end, are old things, unable to accommodate new things, and thus bursting at the seams. New wine in old wineskins. A new patch on an old piece of fabric. A house that used to be big enough for Jesus to live, now totally ill-equipped for the exploding ministry at hand. But these physical symbols are actually symbolic of the newness of God’s work, bursting the seams of our expectations. The real story of Mark, chapter 2, is the way that Jesus blows holes in our expectations, again and again. Look at the rest of the chapter:
- He calls as a follower a tax collector, one of the most hated professions around. And then he goes to his house to eat with him. Expectations blown.
- He chooses not to command his disciples to fast and deny themselves, but explains that there is no need to fast while he is alive and with them. Expectations blown.
- He even chooses to pluck heads of grain with his disciples to eat…on the Sabbath, when such a thing was outlawed. Expectations blown.
And that is the point that we might take from the chapter today, because Jesus is still blowing our minds today! Think back to the beginning of 2023…did the year play out in exactly the way that you planned and expected, or did God bring new joys and unexpected healings? Did you see God at work in ways that you never imagined? When we are too beholden to our expectations, we act like the wineskin trying to hold in the new and unexpected power of God at work in our world and our lives. Like a house that bursts at its seams trying to hold back the power of Jesus. Perhaps in 2024, instead of making it all about our plans, we might open our eyes to the radical hospitality of Jesus…the radical forgiveness of Jesus…the radical healing of Jesus?
Your list of favorite Christmas movies might not include the anime film Tokyo Godfathers. This movie, by filmmaker Satoshi Kon, tells the story of three homeless individuals living on the streets in Tokyo: A runaway teen named Miyuki who, when we first meet her, is spitting on strangers from the top of a tall building. A grizzled alcoholic named Gin, with a history of gambling debts. And a transvestite drag queen named Hana.
It is easy to have expectations about folks like these, as we often do about any and all folks living in homelessness. In fact, these assumptions and expectations are woven throughout the film, with these three characters often ridiculed or abused. But then on Christmas Eve, they find an abandoned baby girl…and proceed to spend the rest of the movie searching for her parents. The story is a creative retelling of the story of the Magi and the birth of the Christ child, as these three characters are on a quest to honor a baby that they’d never met.
The message of the movie seems to be that every life is valuable, that every child is a child of God, and that God works in ways that we cannot predict or expect. As they wander through the streets, surrounded by those who are more established, appropriate, or grounded, we eventually find that these are exactly the kinds of folks through which God accomplishes his work. It is those who are blinded by their own expectations who miss the miracle that is happening right in front of them. This year, may we open our eyes to unexpected and unanticipated power of God, right under our noses.
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